Field Notes from the Northern Forest

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, revelatory, and entertaining
Review: I usually borrow books from the library instead of actuallypaying for a book, so it was with some hesitation that I plunked down[my money] for a paperback copy of _Field Notes From the Northern Forest_, by Curt Stager, biologist, educator, and cohost of the radio program "Natural Selections." As it turns out, it was money well spent. As a writer of popular science--biology, in particular--Stager's task is not simple. He must explain, in Darwinian fashion, why and how all the curious adaptations that make creatures so strange and wondrous, confer to them special advantages that make them better able to become ancestors, and this he must do clearly and simply. Stager succeeds resoundingly, with the added touch of playfulness and humor. And, owing to Stager's training in rigorous science (judging by the journals in which he has published), the book is well grounded in Science, mercifully lacking in New-Age nonsense and gut-wrenching appeals to our emotions.

_Field Notes_ is not a show & tell identification guide, nor is it a malediction, written solely to remind us of our reckless and wanton ravaging of the environment. Instead, it is a series of essays covering several years of Stager's careful observations of nature, bolstered by relevant information in the scientific literature. His research, importantly, is gleaned largely from primary sources of information, not from secondary, often cherry-picked and tendentious interpretations of scientific data we so often see in agenda-driven publications. With the flood of books, journal articles, and newspaper stories relating to the natural world that has swept into our everyday lives since the environmental movement emerged three decades ago--most of which is sullied by political correctness and environmental extremism--Stager's _Field Notes_ is a refreshing departure from the "the sky is falling!" message which so often suffuses the Nature genre. Stager does, however, caution us of

environmental degradation relevant in the Northern Forest caused by humans, such as the problems of acid rain, unchecked development, and insatiable resource consumption. But on the whole, the book remains delightfully non-alarmist and upbeat.

One thing that keeps the content of _Field Notes_ close to earth is Stager's ability to appreciate and mediate both sides of a contentious issue. The vast Adirondack Park, where Stager makes his home, contains more than its share of dichotomies--political, social, cultural, and economic--where land-use controls dictate how the area is to be developed, and where a constant battle is waged between many of the natives, who feel the controls are intrusive, and the preservationists, who want minimal human impact on the land. Stager, obviously keenly aware of the struggles that go on in the lives of the creatures around him, is also mindful of the cultural tug-of-wars that surround him, and his sensitivity to both sides resonates in _Field Notes_. For example, Stager risks incurring the wrath of the animal rights activists when he daringly proposes a radical method of controlling the burgeoning beaver population: by--perish the thought!--harvesting them!

Stager's essays probe and lay open to question many of our idealistic, romantic, and often intuitively-held notions of nature. He challenges us to rethink our tendency to regard all things natural as healthful and benign. Quite to the contrary, as he mordantly points out in his revelatory essay on plant defenses. In his chapter on native species, Stager reveals the dynamic and transitory nature of the natural world, one that is in a state of constant flux, thereby pulling apart our idea of stasis in nature, and invalidating such a thing as a "native" species. The well-intentioned foot soldiers waging war on invasive exotics might pause to consider this before brandishing their Round-up-filled spray guns.

My only disappointment with _Field Notes_ is (to me) a palpable omission in his essay on beavers. In it he talks about the modern beaver's giant six-foot-long ancestors, but he fails to speculate on what might have caused their demise, along with the extinction of several other species of magnificent megafauna that once roamed the Northern Forest a mere ten thousand or so years ago. He only cites a Native American folklore account, most likely based on mysticism and superstition, of how the present beavers came to be. But there is fairly convincing evidence in the scientific literature (of which I'm sure Stager is aware) that adduces their demise to over-hunting by Native Americans, and I suspect that this political-cultural hot-button, coupled with Stager's close friendship with local Mohawk Indian poet Maurice Kenny (to whom he co-dedicates the book), and Native American rights advocate Ray Fadden, colored stager's decision not to share this information with his audience. Had he shared this information, it would have been in keeping with much of the Nature myth-dispelling that runs through his essays, and the notion that Native Americans were intentionally careful stewards of the land could have been another popularly-held idea worthy of more scrutiny by his audience.

No one can fault a culture for behaviors based on mysticism and superstitions thousands of years ago, but today, more than two centuries since The Enlightenment, the notion of a scientically advanced culture clinging to such irrational beliefs is astonishing. And Stager, who has already warned us of the potential health-related dangers of our foolish New-Age belief in the supposed innocence and benignity of nature, in his chapter on bears again warns us of the potentially far-reaching and devastating consequences of the silly and superstitious belief that a bear's bladder (or a rhinoceros horn, etc.) can cure impotence. This irrational belief, largely based in Eastern cultures, is fundamentally no different from the New-Age belief system that has most recently emerged in scientifically and technologically advanced societies today. This sort of fuzzy thinking is anathema to science, and we may be facing another wave of extinctions of megafauna if it continues to manifests itself as an assault on the natural world. (That is, of course, if we don't manage to kill them all off some other way first.)

Stager's allusions to the folly of magical thinking add even more to the depth of _Field Notes_, already rich in content. Keeping in mind that his intent is to keep the content optimistic and hopeful, as well as instructive and entertaining, inviting too much controversy would only defeat this purpose. Field Notes will go up in my bookcase and share a space next to two of my favorite popular biology books, May Theilgaard Watts' _Reading the Landscape of America_, and Paul A. Colinvaux's _Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare_.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, revelatory, and entertaining
Review: I usually borrow books from the library instead of actuallypaying for a book, so it was with some hesitation that I plunked down[my money] for a paperback copy of _Field Notes From the Northern Forest_, by Curt Stager, biologist, educator, and cohost of the radio program "Natural Selections." As it turns out, it was money well spent. As a writer of popular science--biology, in particular--Stager's task is not simple. He must explain, in Darwinian fashion, why and how all the curious adaptations that make creatures so strange and wondrous, confer to them special advantages that make them better able to become ancestors, and this he must do clearly and simply. Stager succeeds resoundingly, with the added touch of playfulness and humor. And, owing to Stager's training in rigorous science (judging by the journals in which he has published), the book is well grounded in Science, mercifully lacking in New-Age nonsense and gut-wrenching appeals to our emotions.

_Field Notes_ is not a show & tell identification guide, nor is it a malediction, written solely to remind us of our reckless and wanton ravaging of the environment. Instead, it is a series of essays covering several years of Stager's careful observations of nature, bolstered by relevant information in the scientific literature. His research, importantly, is gleaned largely from primary sources of information, not from secondary, often cherry-picked and tendentious interpretations of scientific data we so often see in agenda-driven publications. With the flood of books, journal articles, and newspaper stories relating to the natural world that has swept into our everyday lives since the environmental movement emerged three decades ago--most of which is sullied by political correctness and environmental extremism--Stager's _Field Notes_ is a refreshing departure from the "the sky is falling!" message which so often suffuses the Nature genre. Stager does, however, caution us of

environmental degradation relevant in the Northern Forest caused by humans, such as the problems of acid rain, unchecked development, and insatiable resource consumption. But on the whole, the book remains delightfully non-alarmist and upbeat.

One thing that keeps the content of _Field Notes_ close to earth is Stager's ability to appreciate and mediate both sides of a contentious issue. The vast Adirondack Park, where Stager makes his home, contains more than its share of dichotomies--political, social, cultural, and economic--where land-use controls dictate how the area is to be developed, and where a constant battle is waged between many of the natives, who feel the controls are intrusive, and the preservationists, who want minimal human impact on the land. Stager, obviously keenly aware of the struggles that go on in the lives of the creatures around him, is also mindful of the cultural tug-of-wars that surround him, and his sensitivity to both sides resonates in _Field Notes_. For example, Stager risks incurring the wrath of the animal rights activists when he daringly proposes a radical method of controlling the burgeoning beaver population: by--perish the thought!--harvesting them!

Stager's essays probe and lay open to question many of our idealistic, romantic, and often intuitively-held notions of nature. He challenges us to rethink our tendency to regard all things natural as healthful and benign. Quite to the contrary, as he mordantly points out in his revelatory essay on plant defenses. In his chapter on native species, Stager reveals the dynamic and transitory nature of the natural world, one that is in a state of constant flux, thereby pulling apart our idea of stasis in nature, and invalidating such a thing as a "native" species. The well-intentioned foot soldiers waging war on invasive exotics might pause to consider this before brandishing their Round-up-filled spray guns.

My only disappointment with _Field Notes_ is (to me) a palpable omission in his essay on beavers. In it he talks about the modern beaver's giant six-foot-long ancestors, but he fails to speculate on what might have caused their demise, along with the extinction of several other species of magnificent megafauna that once roamed the Northern Forest a mere ten thousand or so years ago. He only cites a Native American folklore account, most likely based on mysticism and superstition, of how the present beavers came to be. But there is fairly convincing evidence in the scientific literature (of which I'm sure Stager is aware) that adduces their demise to over-hunting by Native Americans, and I suspect that this political-cultural hot-button, coupled with Stager's close friendship with local Mohawk Indian poet Maurice Kenny (to whom he co-dedicates the book), and Native American rights advocate Ray Fadden, colored stager's decision not to share this information with his audience. Had he shared this information, it would have been in keeping with much of the Nature myth-dispelling that runs through his essays, and the notion that Native Americans were intentionally careful stewards of the land could have been another popularly-held idea worthy of more scrutiny by his audience.

No one can fault a culture for behaviors based on mysticism and superstitions thousands of years ago, but today, more than two centuries since The Enlightenment, the notion of a scientically advanced culture clinging to such irrational beliefs is astonishing. And Stager, who has already warned us of the potential health-related dangers of our foolish New-Age belief in the supposed innocence and benignity of nature, in his chapter on bears again warns us of the potentially far-reaching and devastating consequences of the silly and superstitious belief that a bear's bladder (or a rhinoceros horn, etc.) can cure impotence. This irrational belief, largely based in Eastern cultures, is fundamentally no different from the New-Age belief system that has most recently emerged in scientifically and technologically advanced societies today. This sort of fuzzy thinking is anathema to science, and we may be facing another wave of extinctions of megafauna if it continues to manifests itself as an assault on the natural world. (That is, of course, if we don't manage to kill them all off some other way first.)

Stager's allusions to the folly of magical thinking add even more to the depth of _Field Notes_, already rich in content. Keeping in mind that his intent is to keep the content optimistic and hopeful, as well as instructive and entertaining, inviting too much controversy would only defeat this purpose. Field Notes will go up in my bookcase and share a space next to two of my favorite popular biology books, May Theilgaard Watts' _Reading the Landscape of America_, and Paul A. Colinvaux's _Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare_.